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20,000

The unemployment rate has jumped to 7.6%. America lost 598,000 jobs in January alone. 98% of American cities saw their unemployment increase in December. Needless to say, our economy is in trouble.

There is a job creation bill in Congress that would create anywhere from 1.2 to 3.9 million new jobs over the next few years. Yet, the Republicans are holding that bill up because they disagree with just 2% of it. That’s right–apparently supporting 98% of a piece of legislation isn’t enough to get Republicans to vote for it.

And what’s the GOP’s latest talking point in the debate over the stimulus bill? “Why the hurry?” That’s right–our economy is crumbling all around us but the GOP is content to sit back, kick up their heels and drag this process out for as long as they want.

According to January’s job loss figures, we’re losing nearly 20,000 jobs a day. Every day the GOP drags their feet, every day they waste on gimmicks like making charts explaining how high a pile of $1 trillion dollars goes or stuffing more tax cuts into the stimulus bill or pimping their own plan (which happens to be devoid of actual economic stimulus), America loses 20,000 more jobs.

Today, while the GOP withheld their votes in the hopes of getting more pro-corporate goodies into the bill, 20,000 Americans lost their jobs. And since it’s a Friday, Congress won’t be able to consider the bill until Monday, ensuring 40,000 Americans will lose their jobs over the weekend. And even if the Senate manages to pass the bill on Monday, that will be after another 20,000 lost jobs before this bill becomes law.

What’s the hurry? How about the tens of thousands of Americans losing their jobs every day? Is that a big enough problem to get the GOP to act, or have they just stopped caring at this point? Maybe we should have Republican Senators and Congressman go explain to the newly-unemployed people in their districts why it was necessary to sacrifice their jobs for the sake of a capital gains tax cut or a corporate income rate tax cut. That should win them a lot of votes come 2010.

Republicans fiddle while the economy burns. How many more jobs do we have to lose before they budge?